


recursion()

by LunaChai



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24065326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaChai/pseuds/LunaChai
Summary: Hey, Red. We're not getting away with this, are we?
Relationships: Red/Subject | The Boxer
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	recursion()

**Author's Note:**

> i replayed transistor and now i'm all emo

**9th time**

"That's it. Pull."

She weeps in silence as she extracts the weapon from his chest, tears like morning rain on her cheeks. Heavy. The Transistor, the body, the past. It's on her shoulders, cold and unyielding like a brace of unrefined steel.

"What's—Red, why are you crying? No need to cry. I'm right here."

She clutches the sword with both arms. A languid sigh.

"Wish I could hold you, Red. Really wish I could."

.

.

.

**11,319th time**

"Hey, Red. We're not getting away with this, are we?"

.

.

.

**126th time**

She sits a little longer on the Highrise skyline. Tastes it on her tongue.

She thinks of how the city at her feet is so blank, so barren. An oil painting washed into snow. Someone's making it blank. Made it blank.

There used to be life. Auden and Sibyl, Junction Jan's, drinking and carousing with songs to last 'til sunset. But it's all gone. Barren. Everything she had to live for, every reason, just dust, facsimiles, traces.

No use to living in a fake world, a whitewashed tomb. That's why she'd make the same choice. Every time.

She finally stands and dusts off her skirt. Time to get moving. The Camerata await.

.

.

.

**before**

"Sea Monster's really the only choice here."

She smiles, a glint beneath the dingy overhead. "You wanna bet?"

.

.

.

**2.057th time**

Fighting Royce gets easier until it's easy. She blinks and then he's fallen over, dead.

He's so fragile. Like Auden. Auden, her steadfast sentinel. A man as tall as a mountain and broad as a shield. He was strong, sturdy. Always knew what to do, even when the alarms were blaring and the shots were vibrating around her ears.

He'd grab her arms and run her out, shielding her with his own flesh. _Come with me, Red,_ he'd say. His voice was the kind that made her bones shake, low and rough with a tinge of midnight husk. _That's it. You're good. We're already outta here, you'll see._

But in the end, he was fragile. All it took was one hit.

She always tries to bring him back. It always fails.

.

.

.

**before**

The day before a gig is always the worst. She's stuck in limbo, drawn taut between the present and the future. Tomorrow looms in wait, and all she can do is sit on some hotel bed and wait for it to knock.

"Big crowd," he notes. He's tying and retying the wrappings over his knuckles. "You gonna be okay?"

Her eyes linger on his hands, warm and strong, moving deft and certain. She looks away.

"I'll manage," she says. It's just about what anyone does these days: manage.

He nods vaguely. The conversation, she thinks, is over.

"I don't really know why," she blurts, and she's looking down at her lap, looking deep into a gold sea of satin. "It's just a song, and I'm just a woman."

He stops at that, fingers static over the wrappings.

She waits in the silence, her gut as twisted as her tongue.

He steps close, closer. His weight sinks into the sheets next to her. She can feel his gaze on her face, soft but burning.

"These people, they come to you for more than just a pretty face and a pretty voice," he says, low and lulling. "They come to you for hope."

She grits her teeth into her tongue until she feels iron slick against the roof of her mouth. The weight presses heavily on her shoulders: seas of expectant gazes, fervid whispers in underground kennels, and sharp, steely gazes of the Camerata. It crushes her chest and makes her eyes spin.

"That's too heavy a burden," she manages.

He's bold enough to slip a hand over hers. Callused skin scrapes her knuckles, warm and rugged. She hears his voice before he speaks.

"You won't have to bear it alone."

.

.

.

**31st time**

She breaks and she finally tells him. About the loop. The recursion. She can't get it to stop, and she can't get it to change.

He listens to her in silence, glowing softly.

She's a mess. Tattered cloak, smeared face, crumpled and fetal and defeated, stooped over Sibyl's broken trace. She wonders if that's what she'll become. A husk of nothing, twisted to madness, left to her own nightmares, her own delusions.

He speaks then, strained and fragmented.

"Red. Red, please. You're suffering. I can see that you're suffering. Just end it, end this. Don't cry anymore. Not for me."

.

.

.

**before**

They make for an odd pair. A singer who never talks, and a bodyguard who knows how to ease her out of her shell. Singers are supposed to be chatty and bodyguards are supposed to be stoic, but it's not so. Not for them.

He knows how to make her bloom. A snarky quip, a gentle word. An observation that paints artistry before her eyes.

"Mild today, again," he says one day, pointing at the sky. "Wish they'd go for something different."

Something sparks in her chest. Lyrics rise like the dawn, natural and pouring out of her, and she suddenly seizes a piece of paper and starts _writing,_ a song bleeding from behind her closed lips.

_Take up the call and follow everybody_   
_I won't become a number in the system_   
_Zeroes and ones_   
_Not me_   
_Not me_

He peers over her shoulder and smiles at what he sees. "That's it. To hell with the poll, right? We should have some frog rain. Or a cyclone here or there. Spice things up."

It's the first time she writes so fast, a whole song in one day. Pouring out, unstoppable.

He is her muse, and he makes her spirit sing.

.

.

.

**7,716th time**

When she stands over his corpse again, seeing his ragged jacket, his dead eyes, the cut of his jaw, something lifeless flicks on in her. She swells with emotion, flooded, hopeless.

She takes up the Transistor. Her mouth stretches open in a silent scream.

Cyan light sears down, down, down again. The weight of the weapon crashes into his corpse, ripping it apart. The sound is dull and sullen, absorbed into the boundless skyline. He flops down. Sinks lower. He's gone.

She keeps striking. Her vision is blinded by tears that sear down her cheeks. Down and down, again and again and again.

Then the Transistor blooms quietly, light casting across the mangled corpse.

"That's right." It's his voice. Soothing. Unchanging. "Let it all out."

She breaks.

The Transistor drops, heavy and sedate with a low clatter. She sinks down. Her hands grip the front of his tattered shirt and she presses her face into the scraps, sobbing. He's cold, so cold, shattered by her own blows.

"Red." The slightest break. His lower register thrums, emotional. "You have to go. You have to get out of here."

She curls closer, the screams lodged in her throat, unable to break past a wall.

Help. _Help._

The world is heavy. She's rebuilt it so many times that she's lost count. How many times has she torn it down and raised it back up, only to find that not a single stone is out of place?

"Red. Stand up. You can stand."

Her legs shake. She draws them under her hips and presses hard against the floor. Shakily, she rises a few inches; then her thighs give out and she falls back down.

"Come on. I'm here."

Again, again. She braces her hands on her knees and pushes up. She staggers against the wall. But she's standing.

"That's it."

She pulls up the Transistor. The burden of it digs into her fingers, into her bones.

"One step at a time."

She takes one step and metal grinds down. She hefts the weapon again—up, lighter. Another step.

"That's it. Left in front of the right."

She drags her foot forward.

"You can do it, see?"

His voice carries her like she's crippled. She passes under the threshold and faces the rest of Cloudbank, taped together by a ghost at her side.

.

.

.

**before**

Prospective client meetings happen in the backrooms of the inner city, and this one's no different. She slides in just past midnight, shrouded in a dark coat with a hood, blending into the shadows like a circuit on a board.

The door opens five minutes after she arrives. She checks a cyberwatch: right on time.

Prompt. She hums appreciatively.

The newcomer is tall and broad-shouldered, hands wrapped in ragged bandages. He towers over her, but she doesn't falter.

"Red," he greets.

"The Boxer," she responds.

"Heard you saw me in the kennels." His hands are at ease in his pockets, loose and lounging like a wolf ready to strike. "Doesn't seem like the kind of joint that an artist would frequent."

Layers behind layers, questions behind questions.

She folds her hands together. "Kennels have the best of the best," she says.

A spark of interest in those eyes. "Doing something that needs the best of the best?"

"I might be."

He leans in. Wasn't engaged before, but now he is. His eyes scan her face, and his brows lift.

"You don't need the best," he notes. "You need a troublemaker. That's why you're picking from the kennels."

She shrugs. "Am I wrong?"

Something clicks. A pipe setting in place, a plug threading into a socket. He grins, a glint of teeth.

"Name's Auden," he says, and straightens. "Look forward to working with you."

Her shoulders loosen just slightly—betray her pent-up nervousness. "I'm not much of a talker," she warns.

He extends a hand. "Shouldn't be a problem."

She grips it and shakes it, firm, almost insolent. Maybe he can feel the rebellion rising in her veins, because he smiles.

.

.

.

**13,187th time**

"...I love you too."

Well. At least she found her voice.

.

.

.

**1st time**

_We all become one._

_We_

_all_

_become_

.

.

.

process.quit()

consoleMessageReturn = "Are you sure you would like to destroy all data within the Transistor? This action cannot be reversed."

system.confirm()

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.

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DATA TERMINATED


End file.
